A ‘Macroblogging’ Service, Woofer, Launches as Twitter Homage

Instead of tweeting 140 characters as you would on Twitter, Woofer requires you to macroblog, or woof, at least 1,400 characters before you can publish.

Lucky for you, there’s a new site billed as the “anti-Twitter”: Woofer, a so-called macroblogging service with a 1,400-character minimum per post.

While taking a break from work on a Friday afternoon, Peter Martin and his friend Portman Wills, both of Washington, D.C., decided it’d be entertaining to create a Twitter-like site that enforces verbosity.

The Wall Street Journal: How would you describe this site to a Twitter user?

Mr. Martin: We’re explaining it as macroblogging, as a play on words as microblogging. The idea behind it is to encourage people to post things. As opposed to the brevity in many tweets, we wanted people to be verbose and eloquent and post more long-winded thoughts.

WSJ: You’re searching for eloquence, but there seems to be a lot of unoriginality -– copying and pasting and repetition. Is it living up to its potential?

Mr. Martin: I think just because it’s brand new, there are a lot of people just testing if the site even works. So they’re just typing “asdf asdf” many times just to see what happens if they post it. There’s no login or password. You can’t join the site. It’s all public postings, so I think people are just experimenting with it.

Some of the best woofs are being tweeted about. People write short stories, poems or plays, and they tweet about it on Twitter and say “Hey, check this out,” and they link to it and send people to direct woofs (accompanied with #woofer in the tweets).

WSJ: What about the Oprah and Obama impersonators? Are they moving from Twitter to Woofer?

Mr. Martin: We do not have a login system. Technically anybody could put their names up just like they could on any message board. It’s not surprising people are signing their name as God, Oprah or Abraham Lincoln. It’s a silly site.

WSJ: There’s a lot of disclaimers about Woofer being unaffiliated with Twitter. Are you worried about this side project running into legal trouble?

Mr. Martin: Not at all. We love Twitter. We did it as an homage to this site we use and love, and we think it’s an awesome project. We just wanted it to be utterly clear that this is not a competitor.

WSJ: How many woofs do you read?

Mr. Martin: The ones that aren’t just gobbledygook nonsense that just copy and paste stuff — I’ve read most of them. There are a couple thousand in there now, so I have my little archive of my favorites. People are really creative. They’re writing all kinds of stories and diatribes. My favorite are the ones who think it’s sort of like a game, and they just start typing, and it’s just stream of consciousness. “1,400 characters. I’m not used to writing this much. Oh wow, 1,200 to go. Oh wow, my mom told me the other day.” And they start reeling off information about the movie they saw. They kind of get a lot off their chest, like on a psychiatrist’s couch. And when they reach the end, it’s like, “Ta-da, I did it. I’m not used to writing that much.”

WSJ: You said the reception’s largely been positive.

Mr. Martin: We’ve been following people tweeting about it on Twitter. People think it’s hilarious. They’re tweeting about their woofs. They get the irony. There are a lot of LOLs after “Check this out.” I think the real power Twitter users who have been traditionally constrained by the 140-character limit are really frustrated and have to tweet multiple times to get a point across or share some information. While it is a parody, they see being able to write long, long series of strings of text to describe something is sort of a relief and unshackles the freedom of communication. In a sense, it’s social commentary about being eloquent as opposed to using brevity.

WSJ:Do you yourself have a social commentary about the fast-paced society we live in that bursts out 140-character messages?

Mr. Martin: My mom used to say how important it is to just sit down and write a letter, and don’t just text somebody or send somebody a quick IM or quick email. The lost art of communication through letter writing is really valuable. Our society has gotten very brief in our communication, and this kind of harkens back to the day when it’s OK to be a little long-winded.